h insomnia had better
avoid bad dreams of that kind if he knew what was good for him.

Ekstrohm had to hide his secret.

In a camp, instead of shipboard, hiding the secret was easier. But the
secret itself was just as hard.

Ekstrohm picked up a lightweight no-back from the ship's library, a book
by Bloch, the famous twentieth-century expert on sex. He scanned a few
lines on the social repercussions of a celebrated nineteenth-century sex
murderer, but he couldn't seem to concentrate on the weighty,
pontifical, ponderous style.

On impulse, he flipped up the heat control on his coverall and slid back
the hatch of the bubble.

Ekstrohm walked through the alien grass and looked up at the unfamiliar
constellations, smelling the frozen sterility of the thin air.

Behind him, his mates stirred without waking.

II

Ekstrohm was startled in the morning by a banging on the hatch of his
bubble. It took him a few seconds to put his thoughts in order, and then
he got up from the bunk where he had been resting, sleeplessly.

The angry burnt-red face of Ryan greeted him. "Okay, Stormy, this isn't
the place for fun and games. What did you do with them?"

"Do with what?"

"The dead beasties. All the dead animals laying around the ship."

"What are you talking about, Ryan? What do you think I did with them?"

"I don't know. All I know is that they are gone."

"_Gone?_"

Ekstrohm shouldered his way outside and scanned the veldt.

There was no ring of animal corpses. Nothing. Nothing but wispy grass
whipping in the keen breeze.

"I'll be damned," Ekstrohm said.

"You are right now, buddy. ExPe doesn't like anybody mucking up primary
evidence."

"Where do you get off, Ryan?" Ekstrohm demanded. "Why pick me for your
patsy? This has got to be some kind of local phenomenon. Why accuse a
shipmate of being behind this?"

"Listen, Ekstrohm, I want to give you the benefit of every doubt. But
you aren't exactly the model of a surveyor, you know. You've been riding
on a pink ticket for six years, you know that."

"No," Ekstrohm said. "No, I didn't know that."

"You've been hiding things from me and Nogol every jump we've made with
you. Now comes this! It fits the pattern of secrecy and stealth you've
been involved in."

"What could I do with your lousy dead bodies? What would I want with
them?"

"All I know is that you were outside the bubbles last night, and you
were the only sentient being who came in or out of o